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Sunday, November 20, 2011

No, You're A Doofus!

Can the Red Sox do anything else to boost their image as a doofus organization?

High school diction at its finest!

Remember when the Yawkey Way boys were a mere team, playing baseball games?

Not anymore. The Sox don’t play games in November (they don’t play in October anymore, either, come to think of it). But they are in the news, and on our minds much more than the Celtics, Bruins or midseason Patriots.

I wonder if he wrote that last sentence with a straight face. The Celtics are locked out, the Bruins just won their eight consecutive game last night and the Patriots are atop the AFC East with a 6 - 3 record. Who does Shank think he's kidding?

...Things got so bad last week that Miss Heidi left without even leaving a note (the good news on that one is it finally gives Tom Werner something to do). Can’t say we blame her.

I'll be charitable here - to imply the Red Sox organization had any say in Heidi's departure just means that Shank's reaching for negative things to hang on the Red Sox ownership. Indirect affect, perhaps, but direct? Sorry, but Shank's wrong on that point.

...It doesn’t really matter how long it takes if the Sox wind up getting the right guy, but this process at the very least raises questions about the chain of command on Yawkey Way.

I wonder how many local sports reporters and columnists have been raising questions about the chain of command on Yawkey Way?

My conclusion - a mixed bag. Reviewing John Tomase's columns, I find the 'let's shit on Red Sox management & ownership' genre of columns to be of less frequency than Shank's totals. I don't find Mazz's columns nearly as harsh on the Sox brain trust as Shank's; your results may vary. With that filtering, I think it's not 'raising questions', it's Shank raising the questions.

After the soft parade of Dale Sveum, Pete Mackanin, Sandy Alomar Jr., Torey Lovullo, and Gene Lamont, Sox ownership effectively emasculated new general manager Ben Cherington in Milwaukee last week, thumbing their noses at Sveum, the choice of Ben and his baseball ops team. Then we find out the owners wanted a guy like Bobby Valentine all along.

So, what was the Dale and Pony Show at Fenway over the last three weeks? Was it really necessary to trot all those guys out in front of the media so we could find out that none of it was serious?

Why the misdirection? Why make your serious new GM look powerless right out of the gate (Ben is in the Dominican Republic this weekend, scouting Yoenis Cespedes while the grown-ups resume the managerial search)? What is happening at the top?

Shank mentioned two managers that he'd prefer lead the Red Sox - Bobby Valentine was one of them. You'd think he'd be somewhat happy about this development, but that's not the Shank we know and love...

John Henry has gone underground since bursting into the SportsHub studios. It’s pretty clear that pork bellies, Liverpool, and his new family have taken his attention away from the Red Sox. Meanwhile, Inspector Werner is now on the case looking for the next Heidi and more of that nifty, award-winning NESN programming. That leaves Larry Lucchino, “the man who runs the Red Sox.’’

I'll bet $50 that Shank wanted to write Inspector Clouseau instead. But he can't trash the guy who gave his daughter an internship in Werner's Hollywood company, can he?

Without saying much of anything, Larry is presenting as the de facto GM of the Red Sox, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The Sox could have used some of Larry’s urgency when Jonathan Papelbon was allowed to walk without receiving an offer.

Papelbon was determined to test the free agent market come hell or high water. Any offer the Red Sox would have put forth had a very high probability of being rejected. The fact that he was the first free agent signed tells you one thing - he wanted out of Boston, period.

...Now it’s on to Bobby V.

This is going to be great. Let’s hope Valentine brings the fake nose and glasses he wore in the Mets dugout. Maybe he has a Groucho mask.

Or a Dan Shaughnessy wig...

UPDATE at 10:05 PM - Shank writes:

Speaking of pathetic, we have the Cirque-de-so-lame managerial search, which is now coming up on its eighth week. The world champion St. Louis Cardinals needed only 12 days to find their man.

That man would be Mike Matheny, who just walked away from an approximate $4 million mortgage and was sued by the lending bank the next month. Do you think the Red Sox just might be performing more due diligence in their managerial search than other teams? Is it possible things like this matter to the Red Sox and might be a factor in the length of time of their managerial search? We don't know, but Shank apparently doesn't think so. Maybe Matheny and real estate mogul Donald Trump can get together on a project?